Let's Just Take the Next Four Years Off

November 10, 2008

As I write this, the United States of America is 24 hours away from the closing of the polls on Election Day, 2008. My fervent prayer is that voters are not so stupid as to elect Barack Obama president. But stranger things have happened in American politics.

Many red flags have been flying for months about this radical from the Chicago political machine. There are his associates, a motley collection of Marxists, criminals and terrorists: Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, Rashid Khalidi, Michael Pfleger, Tony Rezko, and ACORN. There is his collectivist desire to, as he told Joe the Plumber, "spread the wealth around." There is his plan to surrender in Iraq. There are his utopian ideas about fairness and justice, his scheme to destroy the energy industry and his disdain for those of us in Middle America clinging to our guns and religion. Then there is his chilling disregard for the Constitution.

On the eve of this election, we discovered new revelations about his plans to "bankrupt" the coal industry. When asked about the skyrocketing cost of electricity under such a scheme, Obama admits it outright.

Barack Obama is the Hugo Chavez of American politics. He is radical beyond anything we have seen come out of the Democratic Party before. His Marxist ideas could do permanent damage to the people of this country. Far too many of us are already dependent on our government, so much so that when a crisis looms, that is where we turn for solutions to our problems.

That is why an insignificant little commercial the Obama campaign ran just days before the election was so disturbing to me. In the commercial, voters were told to take the day off from work, from school, from any other productive activity in which they might otherwise be engaged in order to work for the election of Barack Obama. Michelle Obama also called for supporters to take the day off to work for her husband.

He is, after all, "The One," and what could possibly be more important than working for him?

The message contained in that simple commercial is revealing. Barack Obama will take care of you. That is the message. Go ahead, take off work; skip school; take off from caring for your children; forget about providing for your life and your family in order to help elect the man who will provide you with everything.

Can't pay your mortgage (or don't want to)? Don't worry, Barack the Messiah will save you. In fact, why shouldn't you have an even bigger house? You deserve it just as much as those evil rich people (you know, those people making more than $42,000 per year). Need a new car? If health care is a right, shouldn't housing and transportation be also? And what about sending my kid to college? That's a right, too, right?

Well, productive Americans, I say we take him at his word. He wants us to set aside one day to get him elected, I say we follow the example of John Galt and his industrialist allies in Ayn Rand's classic tome, "Atlas Shrugged." Let's just take the next four years off. If Messiah Obama is elected, let's just get on the gravy train and let him figure out how to provide us with everything we need - without our productivity to pay for it all. Let's just see how many tax dollars he can collect from us if we stop working for the government and let the government provide for us for the next 1,461 days.

Let's all file for unemployment, collect a welfare check, sign up for food stamps, public housing and government health insurance and then spend the next four years sitting in front of our big-screen, flat-panel TVs plotting how to take back the Republic in 2012.

Just don't get too comfortable there.

Doug Patton describes himself as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.comand/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.